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IGERT Lifechips fellow Antonio Davila -development of a nano-device to measure mitochondrial membrane
Achievement/Results
NSF funded IGERT-Lifechips trainee Antonio Davila from the department of Biological Chemistry at UC-Irvine and his advisor is Dr. Dough Wallace, who is also a Lifechips faculty member. Antonio’s research was about the development and prototype of a nano-device that measures mitochondrial membrane potential at an unprecedented scale. In more details, the nano-potentiometer is the result of a collaborative effort from experts in cell biology and biomedical and electrical engineering to scale down procedures necessary to determine the status of valuable human embryonic stem cells in culture.
The multidisciplinary approach to addressing these critical health monitoring issues allows the system a unique insight into the specialized needs of life science researchers and presents an innovative and accessible solution. The nano-scale monitoring device offers the researcher the critical information necessary to maintain the optimum conditions for the culturing of valuable cell lines. This inexpensive, re-usable system is accurate and readily-implementable to allow the maximum efficacy from research costs by minimizing the biological material needed for diagnostics.
Antonio and his research team have developed a nano-oxygen sensor inside of a microfluidic chamber capable of measuring the metabolic rate of a single, viable hESC. Using microfabrication techniques in conjunction with mitochondrial biochemistry, we can determine the membrane potential within a tiny sample of isolated mitochondria. We have successfully scaled down the needed biological sample by 250,000 times! The mitochondria are the organelles responsible for generating energy in the cell and, as a toxic by-product, create volatile reactive oxygen species (ROS) which can damage surrounding DNA, proteins, and lipids. The membrane potential offers a broad overview of the overall metabolic health. The major advancement-indeed, the initial objective- was to dramatically decrease the biological material needed for conducting these measurements.
Address Goals
IGERT-Lifechips trainee Antonio Davila demonstrated in his research report that he used the microfabrication techniques in conjunction with mitochondrial biochemistry for his experiments, which shows that he is applying the interdisciplinary techniques. The Lifechips program boot-camp- a two week training- also introduced students to microfabrication and Antonio had shown that what he learned was beneficial to his research.
